My Baby Is A Poo Marine – Part 2

“In the air, on land, and sea” goes the Marine’s hymn.

A couple of nights after the marine ambush, the Meatball was restless … planning his next assault.

He didn’t want to go to bed when Husband and I wanted to go to bed. (No, we don’t have a set bedtime or a bedtime routine started. Worst parents ever – I know, I know.) He just wanted to eat and fuss and poop and fuss. Little did I know he was lulling me into a sleepy defenselessness.

By 3 AM, he’d done just that.

And he knew it. 

He started in on that I-hate-wet-diapers murmuring, so I slid out of bed with him before he could wake Husband, and trudged into the nursery.

At night, we do diaper changes on an old-school cloth diaper on the baby blanket in the middle of the floor. The Christmas lights that are still (I know, I know) framing the picture window in the nursery are adequate lighting (and so shiny!) for wiping poop off a little butt just below them, and most nights the dim lighting keeps everyone sleepy enough to fall right back into dreamland.

So Cranky Face and I plopped down on the floor, and I didn’t even try to shush him as I un-velcro-ed (so not a word) his diaper. I left him unguarded as I pulled out the cloth liner, which is exactly what he was hoping I would do, and which you are currently groaning at but he hasn’t peed on me in weeks, okay? And did I mention it was 3 AM and I was exhausted and just so over it?

As I tucked the first cloth corner into the plastic lining, he let out a little fart.

Little did I know that was a warning shot.

I ignored his gas as I tucked. I ignored the second one too, but the third one was more than I could ignore.

Let me say that Meatball has pooped mid-diaper change before. Twice, that I can recall, and both times it did what you would expect semi-watery baby poo to do. It oozed and it seeped.

This did not ooze or seep.

This projected. And it left a wake of destruction along its path. There was poo-shrapnel on the cloth diaper, on the quilt, on the carpet and, mostly, on the thin pajama pants hardly shielding my calf. Then, correction, it did seep – into the quilt, the carpet, and my pants.

I wish I could say I responded in the kind of good humor that I suggested the next morning on Fakebook, but I didn’t. I wish I could say I was a model Christian mommy, full of joy and peace, but I wasn’t.

I hurried a third diaper on the grinning mini-sniper, and scooped him back to the bedroom. Laying him on the bed, I shook Husband awake and almost sobbed, “Can you just take him?” Then, my 3 AM became a relay of dabbing the off-white carpet, running the quilt to the basement to spray it down with stain-remover, and, as I explained to a confused and frustrated husband, “Trying to find pants to wear that don’t have crap on them!”

He wasn’t in the air himself when he set that one off, but it was the most airborne poop I’ve ever seen so I’m counting it.